In the immortal words of Buddy Holly, "when you're feeling
sad and blue, you know love's made a fool of you."

This could also serve as a fatalistic refrain offered up by
Steven St. Croix's character in Chinatown, an
evocative video noir collaboration from Jonathan
Morgan/Jim Enright that draws its structural inspiration, not
as much as you'd expect from Robert Towne's mainstream film
of the same name, as from Once Upon A Time in America.

In a collage of opium-inspired, beads of facial sweat
flashbacks, we discover that cop St. Croix, himself an
addict, has been derelict in the line of duty. His breach of
conduct has lead to his partner (Jim Enright) taking a bullet
in a drug bust gone haywire.

To his credit, St. Croix's law and order instincts are good,
but his timing for hauling out the personal vices sucks. He's
harped on Enright for accepting information from Jace Rocker,
playing a strung-out snitch who seems to be suffering Britt
Morgan withdrawal" in his scene with Enright. St. Croix's
entreaties fall upon deaf ears but the situation is made
resoundingly worse by St. Croix's failure to provide backup
for his partner during the raid.

Besieged with guilt and all those other little maladies such
as misguided passion which noir characters feel compelled to
endure, St. Croix, now on suspension, is drawn into a murder
case. With a medley of three slugs from a .45, playing a
raspy tune in Randy West's even raspier rib cage, Randy's
wife and St. Croix's former lover, Asia Carrera, becomes the
number one suspect.

It's here that Chinatown, though resoundingly true to
the gripping existential doom of the noir art form, betrays
it to some extent by becoming as obvious as a chopstick
jutting out of an eardrum. Having established a reasonably
acceptable premise and high definition characters, Morgan's
script doesn't just deposit clues to be conveniently
discovered by the audience. It announces them with brass
bands, bullhorns and the tacit subtlety of a shootout in a
John Woo film.

While St. Croix's investigating the murder scene, the
ubiquitous J.B. (he's outfitted like a henchman, but his
relationship to the storyline is up for debate) materializes
out of the ozone to announce that West was a GREEK antiques
dealer. This is, of course, before St. Croix and J.B. engage
in an eyebrow knitting contest.

Okay, we get the point. West, you see, has left a bloodied
clue pointing to his killer, by spelling out the name,
"Venus" on the headboard of his bed. West, as we're expected
to believe, according to good mythological etiquette, should
have scrawled the name, "Aphrodite," instead. Perhaps this is
Morgan's contribution to the art of misdirection. However, if
my life's blood were coursing out of my chest at the moment
as West's is, I might be inclined to brevity, too.

On the whole, Chinatown works effectively thanks to
an obvious sincerity imparted by the cast, director Enright
and Morgan to the project. Sexually, Carrera's first scene
(with St. Croix) shares twin billing with one involving T.T.
Boy and Melanie Masglow. Though poetically justified because
of the obvious physical similarities between the two women,
this co-mingling of reality and St. Croix's hectic drug
euphoria, is another one of those intercut scenes where
you're not exactly sure whose Column A is going into whose
column B at the moment. (Okay, you can tell when it's Masglow
as she keeps one leg up like a pointer in a quail hunt.)

West, remaining a bastard in character, gives Carrera a
royal doggie thumping but the look on her face suggests she's
been pulled over for a speeding ticket on her way to an
aerobics class, suppose this is Asia keeping in character.
Morgan as West's business associate, John Horner, engages
three hookers in a warehouse in what becomes astrap-on
dP when Sierra works Nikki Sinns ass as little
Jack sits in his corner working Nikki from the other end.

When he's not busy turning his eyebrows into wombats, St.
Croix is as low key as he's likely to get. (Compare this to
the antic proclamations he delivers in The Darker Side
this month.) He's physically well suited for these grim
character roles and delivers a pretty good anal scene with
Sahara though, for my money, the missionary position is
wasted camera effort for its inherent visual obstacles.

Bearing in mind that it's essentially a sex feature,
Chinatown, for what it is, makes for an effective
reading of corruption, amorality, degradation, anxiety and
despiritualization. Just another hot time in Raymond
Chandler's old town tonight, but definitely a strong
contender for Best Video Feature of the year.